Midnight Dawn
by colorful swirls
Summary: In the end, she's his hero, not the other way around. - HarryGinny.


**disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter.

**dedicated to**: throw-out-your-doubts, as a sorry gift for how long it took me to write her Universes.

**a big thank you to**: calynn, for beta-ing!

**written for**: Round 2 on love from elysium's Canon Pairings Competition, The If You Dare Challenge (never ending - truly), Popular Songs Competition (Wings), Romance Stories: Reboot (OTP), Pairing Diversity Bootcamp (butterfly kisses), Hufflepuff House Homework (butterfly kisses; Monday mornings; "I didn't know you could sing").

enjoy and please, drop me a review! :)

* * *

_Trees rise up like evergreen mountains from the mossy, light ground. Tufts of dandelions and weeds glint golden from the light that it streaming through the trees: the light of dawn._

* * *

:-:

He is Harry, and she is Ginny, and it should be as easy as breathing for them to love, it should be as simple as walking for them to touch, but it's not.

Worshipping isn't loving, and loving isn't pretending, and pretending isn't forever. Love is love and they are them and this is their story.

:-:

Not on a dark, cold, stormy night.

No, Harry Potter's story began with five teenagers and a boy's dedication to a seemingly worthless effort.

:-:

"Please, Evans," James begs. "Please. Just once."

The girl shakes her head, the red tendrils of her hair swishing across the back of her gold armchair. "Never," she declares firmly, "I'll never go out with you, Potter."

"Fine." He smiles. "You'll be singing a different tune by graduation, Evans." James turns to walk away, his posse following dismally, leaving Lily to raise her eyebrows and chuckle to herself.

That boy is, without a doubt, utterly and completely moronic, if not downright insane.

(Like she'd ever touch _him_ with a stick.)

:-:

"Please?"

It's almost exactly like that day, five years ago: Sirius and Peter are playing chess by the fire; Remus is scribbling in a notebook in a chair nearby; while James sits, pleading, in front of Lily's own gold, fluffy armchair.

"No. Have we not been through this, oh, around three thousand times?"

James grins. "Actually, it's been three hundred times, Lily, dear."

"Whatever," she rolls her eyes, "it doesn't matter. I'm not ever going out with you."

"Just once?" He lifts his head up, resting his hand on her arm, which is clutching the arm of the chair she's snuggled in. "I only want to prove to you that - that I'm not really as horrible as you think I am." His hand slides down and squeezes her hand.

"Please?"

She sighs, ignoring the way his hand on hers makes her more warm than the plush blanket she's cocooned in, ignoring the way his eyes arm are making her tinge pink with their intensity.

And most definitely ignoring the nagging voice in the back of her head that screams, _Merlin, he is so cute!_

"Fine, James." She retracts her arm quickly and focuses on her book, instead of the way James is grinning - like he just broke into an empty candy store, or how Sirius is whooping, or the way Peter is staring, dumbfounded, or especially the way Remus is chuckling in the corner like he knows something they don't.

Two months later, he takes out to the frozen lake, and kisses her, and she kisses him back, shocking herself, him, and the entire world.

Ice melts around them as she twines her fingers in his unmanageable hair, as he strokes her fiery locks, as a bubble of a possible future appears between their bodies -

But we all know how _that_ story ends.

:-:

Molly Prewett is known around Hogwarts as pretty, smart, and formidable, once you got her wound up, that is. In all, she is thought of as a perfectly normal sixteen-year-old witch.

Except for the fact that Arthur Weasley has been head over heels in love with her since primary school, of course.

The boy is genuinely felt sorry for - he did try; no one could take that away from him. But it seems to all, that at least for those first six years, Molly wants nothing more than awkward friendship out of him.

Arthur is kind, though, and more importantly, he is sure of what he wants.

She is the_ one_. And he knows it, knows it like he knows the color of her eyes and the way he knows the freckles underneath her left eyelid.

Every Saturday morning, they meet in the library. Arthur carries books, or researches, or buys her a drink. Mostly he carries books, though, because she doesn't trust him to buy her a drink. "You'll end up ogling a Muggle coffee machine like it's me, or something," Molly remarks.

Alright, so maybe she can be a bit rude, and maybe even a teeny bit conceited, and an even _smaller_ teeny bit mean to her brothers.

But Arthur has always had an eye for the unknown, and he knows that Molly Weasley is a diamond. A diamond in the rough, maybe, but a diamond all the same, and sometimes, her gleam is so bright that it hurts his eyes.

:-:

Finally, in his seventh year, everything changes. Molly's father has been killed. William Prewett, they say his name was.

She smells of despair and shock and rage and numbness for the rest of that year. He tries to act normal, to just be tall, gangly Arthur, with too-large ears, but that doesn't work. He's worried, so he ends up staring at her more than usual, watching a little too much, and she shuts him out.

"Stay away," she sobs. "I have too much going on right now for your drama, Arthur Weasley." He isn't sure why - after six months - there are still tears running down her face, like lakes of silver, but he doesn't like it.

She ignores him for the rest of what is left of the rest of the school year.

On graduation, he slips. One of his friends had dared him, and she comes through the doors with an off-the-shoulder ivory dress, and so of course, all rational thought flies straight out of his head.

She is beautiful. He walks right up to her in the punch line, and kisses her right on the lips, and her expression when he pulls away makes him want to laugh.

Her eyes are saucers; her mouth is an _O_; her features are slack; her hands are shaking. "Arthur - " she begins, but he's gone.

He wonders how _she_ likes people leaving _her_.

His hiding spot in soon found, though. She finds him, and kisses him in the exact place he kissed her, as if in revenge. "I'm sorry," she whispers before his body takes over his brain, and he lifts her up.

He crashes her to him, and he thinks that those days were worth it, because he's finally got her - she's a diamond, and she shines a thousand little shimmers under the sunlight.

:-:

That is how Harry James Potter and Ginevra Molly Weasley came to be on this Earth.

Here is how they spend their lives on this Earth.

:-:

At first, it's all fake.

She loves The Boy Who Lived, not him, not Harry. She vows to marry the savior of the wizarding world. In her first year, he saves her life, and she falls for his image all over again.

By the time her fourth year has rolled around, she's basically over it. She is Ron's little sister, she is baby Ginny, and that is all she'll ever be to him. So, she dates other boys, trying to fully move on from her obsession with Harry Potter.

It doesn't work.

:-:

She's on a winning high, and all she can think is _we won_. She flies into his arms - without a broom - and when he kisses her she thinks that you haven't ever been kissed until you feel his lips on yours.

The world is brighter with her by his side, with the semblance of normality in his completely insane life. He looks at her and he thinks that she is the sun breaking through the trees, the golden light at dawn, even at midnight.

That year is full of a hatred of Monday mornings and butterfly kisses and the light of happiness.

:-:

"I didn't know you could sing," Ginny says incredulously as she watches her boyfriend walk down the steps of the sixth year boys dormitory slowly.

"I can't." He grins at him charmingly and takes her hand, making her breath catch in her throat. "That was a CD player - Dean brought it back with him after Christmas holidays."

"What's a CD player?" she asks eagerly, and then groans; she's turning into her dad.

Harry laughs. "I'll tell you outside," he promises.

It turns that they don't do much talking, though, unfortunately.

:-:

His sixth year is gone by much too quick, and soon enough he's crouching over yet another lost one, and she is still the only one he will react to.

The world is cruel and he has to break things between them, because he'd rather not be with her than her not be with anyone.

It's times like these that the hero thing kills him.

:-:

War tears people apart.

:-:

He's seventeen and the world is cracking, and he has to fix it. So he goes away, to defeat evil, with her brother and his other best friend. They fight and they rage and they plan, and finally, they win.

While the three save the world, Ginny rebels. She can't do major things, obviously, but just being the slightest annoyance to Professor Carrow makes her feel like she's making a change - and she is.

:-:

After the war is when things get shaky, because they're not two teenagers in love anymore, they're two adults that love each other.

With blood still on the ground and her brother's body in the ground and so, so many other bodies in the ground, things are sort of complicated.

He can't touch her, or hug her, or kiss her, but he can love her from afar, and he does, for nearly another year.

:-:

It's Christmas when they start to remember what it was like.

He's sitting on a couch with Ron and Hermione on either side of him, smiling while watching Teddy and Arthur play, when an all-too-familiar smell washes over him suddenly, like a slap.

That is the trigger.

Harry meets Ginny's deep brown eyes with his own bright emerald, and he knows that he cannot keep this facade up any longer.

:-:

He stands up and walks over to her, looking at her with the same slightly-guilty expression he'd worn around her since May. "Hey," he mutters.

"Hello," she says cooly.

Harry sighs. "Ginny - do you think that we could - er - take a walk?" He finishes awkwardly, and she lifts an eyebrow.

"Sure." She takes his arm lightly and it takes everything in him not to shiver.

They walk out into the frosty air of the Burrow's gardens, making a trail in the snow as they venture on silently.

Until she gets tired of the quiet. "Harry, what do you want?"

The tone of her voice is not very encouraging, but he has to tell her this.

"Ginny - I'm so sorry - for everything, I mean, really, I've done nothing but cause you problems - I just wish that - "

The words won't come out the way he wants them to and her eyes are narrowing, so he decides to just forget the speech and tell her what he's thinking.

"Ginny, I love you and I'm sorry about Fred and I want to be with you. A lot. And, I love you."

For a moment, time stands still, as she gazes up at him with a blank expression. Then, she mutters, "You already said that," and nearly knocks him over as she flings her arms around his neck.

"I love you, too, Harry," she whispers into his shirt a few minutes later, and he hasn't felt this good since he was sixteen.

:-:

They walk back into the Burrow holding hands, both wearing tiny smiles, and no one says anything.

Except Ron, of course.

"Harry, I think Hermione - " he stops short as he notices their intertwined hands. "What the hell's going on here?"

"Absolutely nothing you need to concern yourself about," Ginny snaps. Ron scowls.

"If he's messing with you, I think I do need to be concerned - "

"Ron. I'm Harry. Your best mate. Would I mess with your little sister?"

Ron looks up, slowly, and his blue eyes meet Harry's green ones, and in them Harry sees both _good luck_ and _I'll kill you_.

"No," Ron whispers. "I suppose you wouldn't."

Hermione bounds up to them then, with Fleur and Teddy behind her, and Harry tunes them out and looks at Ginny, her hair aflame and her eyes ablaze.

"I love you," he whispers again. She takes her hand out of his and places it on his shoulder, gently pulling him closer.

"I love you, too, for the second time," she says back, and then she kisses him, and he feels surprised eyes on his back, but he doesn't care, because this - Ginny - _this_ is what he fought a war for.

:-:

She's nineteen when he asks for her hand in marriage.

He realizes that they're both young, that this is probably much too early to have a wife, with no war threatening them anymore - but that is exactly why he chooses nineteen.

With no war, they're free and he loves her more than anything he's ever loved, and he just wants to be able to call her his wife, should anything else happen.

Besides, this is a time better than no other, with Bill and Fleur's baby girl perfect for the flower girl.

If she says yes, of course.

:-:

Harry takes her down to Shell Cottage; they walk down the beach, and then he drops down on one knee, with the waves crashing behind him.

He pours out his love for her and gushes about how he can't live without her, until she drops down in front of him and shushes him by crashing her lips to his so forcefully they both fall and nearly drown, but he somehow manages to stop his fall and continue kissing her at the same time.

"Yes," Ginny whispers when they part, and a grin spreads across his face, even though he's still spitting out salt water.

:-:

The years go by faster after the wedding. They have three children: James, Albus, and Lily.

James is a bizarre mixture of his James Potter, Sirius Black, Fred Weasley, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Ginny Weasley.

This causes trouble, to say the least, but James has blue eyes that can make even Ginny stand down (occasionally) and just kiss him on the cheek.

Albus is his father in miniature; he's got the looks, with all of his father's compassion and his namesakes' wisdom and his other namesakes' ability to never, ever forget things (especially things he loves).

Lily is a firecracker. She's got dark red hair and darker brown eyes, and she's born a Slytherin. Harry Potter looks into his newborn daughter's eyes on one July 5th and thinks _Harry Potter, you have met your match._

But even through the trials and efforts of raising three completely insane children, they remain together, and she still kisses him with that blazing look on her face.

:-:

For their twentieth anniversary, she buys him a stuffed white owl, and he cries, even after all the years and new owls that have gone by.

:-:

And even when wrinkles draw maps on her cheeks, he is still the only that can find his way to her heart.

* * *

**a/n**: please don't favorite without reviewing, thanks! :) Also, I was required to write that description at the beginning for the Canon Pairings Competition; if you'd like to see the actual picture that I used as inspiration, here's the URL. (Remove the spaces.)

www . flickr photos / freefallingflora / 8705603814 /


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